International Programme Advisory Committee (IPAC)

The programme for the 10th World Summit will be developed in collaboration with an International Programme Advisory Committee (IPAC), comprising leaders from across the international arts and culture sector, along with representatives from the Arts Council Korea and the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA), as the co-hosts of the Summit. This approach to programming the World Summit was introduced in 2018 and reflects our commitment to work collaboratively and increase opportunities for peer exchange within our international community of members and experts.

The independent members of the International Programme Advisory Committee for the 10th World Summit are:

A photo of Sarah Abdu Bushra.

Credit: Yasmin Abdu Bushra.

Sarah Abdu Bushra (Ethiopia)

Ms Sarah Abdu Bushra is a curator and co-founder of Contemporary Nights, a curatorial collective facilitating research based and process-driven collaborative praxis. Her research interest lies in sensing the lived experiences of artists in East African locality, and documenting their underlying ties towards building alliances that emerge as rooted arts ecosystems. She works to sharpen the East African gaze centring its archives as well as post-contemporary practices of art making, contributing to the plurality of existing narratives concerning exhibition making and curatorial praxis.

Ms Bushra currently works at a family-run bookstore and publishing house, Ankeboot Publishing, that explores books as repository and mutating site of knowledge production.

Khadija El Bennaoui (Morocco/UAE)

Ms Khadija El Bennaoui is a creative agent who pioneered Art Moves Africa in 2005. She has over two decades of experience in curating artistic programs, event organisation, research, and advocacy to foster the growth of independent arts and cultural sectors in the Global South.

She is currently the Head of Performing Arts at the Department of Culture and Tourism in Abu Dhabi and engages with NYU Abu Dhabi as a Visiting Scholar and J-term Visiting Professor. In 2023, Ms El Bennaoui was selected to participate in the European Union/UNESCO Expert Facility and has previously authored the chapter ‘Surviving the Paradoxes of Mobility’ in the UNESCO Global Report 2018, addressing the implementation of the 2005 UNESCO Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. In her capacity as an independent consultant, she has partnered with organisations such as UNESCO, the European Commission, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, and the Ford Foundation, among others.

Credit: Tobias Regell.

Alfons Karabuda (Sweden)

Mr Alfons Karabuda is an accomplished composer with more than 35 years of experience in the fields of music and culture.  Mr Karabuda is currently the Honorary President of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, and Chairman of Musiksverige (Music Sweden), the Internet Media Foundation, and the Polar Music Prize award committee. In addition, he serves as a member of the Board of Directors of The Global Node Stockholm, The Global Music Vault and the Swedish Performing Rights Society (STIM).

Mr Karabuda has served as an expert in artistic rights to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which in 2013 included working on the first-ever UNHRC report on artistic rights. In addition, he has been a member of the cultural committee of the Swedish National Commission for UNESCO and, in 2021, was appointed by the Swedish Government as an expert for the report Restart for Culture - Recovery and Development After Corona. 

Credit: Asja Caspari.

Octavio Kulesz (Italy / Argentina)

Mr Octavio Kulesz is a philosopher, digital publisher and director of Teseo, one of Latin America’s leading electronic publishing houses. As an expert collaborating with international organisations including UNESCO, OIF, IFACCA and the International Alliance of Independent Publishers, his research focuses on issues related to cultural diversity and creative industries in the digital age.

Some of his articles, such as Culture, Platforms and Machines (UNESCO, 2018), presciently anticipated the contemporary challenges associated with the impact of generative artificial intelligence on the cultural sectors by over five years. In 2020, he was selected by UNESCO, along with 23 other international experts, to draft the text of the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the world’s first standard-setting instrument on this topic. He divides his time between Turin (Italy) and Buenos Aires (Argentina). 

A photo of Jinjoon Lee.

Credit: Sungbaek Kim.

Jinjoon Lee (Republic of Korea)

Dr Jinjoon Lee FRSA is a professor and internationally acclaimed contemporary artist exploring the liminoid experience of utopian space ideologies with new technologies. He specialises in transforming spaces that address synesthetic experiences and directing interdisciplinary performances and data-driven art and design utilising advanced technology like AI, VR, and Brain Computer Interface.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a selected Artist for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021, UK. Recently, Dr Lee was a guest artist for the Intelligent Museum project in ZKM following a grant from the German Federal Cultural Foundation in 2023. In 2024, he was awarded a full fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center.

Dr Lee graduated from Seoul National University, Royal College of Art in London and holds a DPhil from the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford. He contributes his expertise as an adviser to the Korean Government, directs the KAIST Art & Technology Research Center, teaches at KAIST's the graduate school for Culture Technology as an associate professor, and also serves as a distinguished professor at the New Contents Academy, Korea Creative Content Agency.

A photo of Phloeun Prim.

Phloeun Prim (Cambodia)

Mr Phloeun Prim is the Executive Director of Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), Phnom Penh. A visionary cultural entrepreneur, Mr Prim has spearheaded CLA's transformation from a grassroots project reviving traditional arts to an organisation working as a catalyst in the country's rapidly expanding arts sector. Mr Prim continues to teach the CLA created university course Arts for Transformation: The Case of Cambodia, to NYU Abu Dhabi students and introduced the course in Cambodia for the first time in 2019.

Mr Prim has been key to the initiation of Mekong Cultural Hub, a regional non-profit working at the intersection between arts and social development, and Connecting South, an initiative to further collaboration across the Global South. He is currently involved in a Connecting South project entitled ‘An AI of Our Own’, that aims to bring Global South communities into the heart of global efforts to democratise access to cultural heritage through technological innovation. 

A photo of Pooja Sood.

Pooja Sood (India)

Ms Pooja Sood is a founding member and Director of Khoj International Artists’ Association, an autonomous, not-for-profit society committed to experimentation and exchange in the visual arts in India. She has actively built a robust network of experimental spaces across South Asia resulting in the South Asian Network for the Arts (SANA). 

Ms Sood has previously served as Director General of the Government-owned Jawahar Kala Kendra (JKK). She is the Founding Director of ArThinkSouthAsia and has been Artistic Director and curator of 48C. Public Art. Ecology. 

Ms Sood has served on several international art juries and participated in various forums on Indian contemporary art, art management and South Asian art. She is a Chevening scholar (Clore Leadership Programme, UK , 2009-2011) based in New Delhi, India. 

 
The logo of the 10th World Summit on Arts & Culture.